Hilltown House 2024 Year in Review

Well – let’s see if I can pick this up where I left things off back in June. I really had the best intentions of keeping my monthly blog posts on track this year but up until November I naively still felt like the year was still young. Despite those good intentions I just couldn’t get things to click social media wise…..and honestly I’m not mad about it. When I set out my goals for this year a lot of them centered around slowing down, not being as tethered to my online persona, and not creating content just for contents sake and along the way I learned a really really valuable lesson – that I don’t have anything to prove anymore. Over the last decade I proved to myself that I could share my creativity and do it well. I proved that my voice has value and that it resonates. And most important that I proved that I don’t have to keep doing it to hold onto those feelings.

It took me until the end of the year to be able to put it into words but what I’ve been slowly doing is making my world smaller – I’ve been turning my focus to my local community and taking actions that may seem small but that I can see resonate in important and tangible ways. Amidst all this change I’ve realized that the rigid structure of this blog that I used to love now feels super limiting and hence it feeling like a chore to keep it up each month. I’m finding myself craving sharing so much more than DIY these days and I’m excited to give things a new feel for 2025. But for now let’s wrap up this half-assed year because even I was surprised at how much I actually did accomplish because it sure as hell didn’t feel that way!

All year I kept feeling like I was woefully far behind on the list of projects I wanted to complete — but shockingly looking at this list I did incredibly well! Not tackling an ORC this year (which was hard) really helped keep things manageable and even though I threw a pretty big built-in into the mix right at the end I feel really good about the slower pace I set – and kept to! My biggest goal was to start the transformation of the front/dining room to make it feel like it matched the updates I’ve added to the rest of the first floor and after a lot of trial and error I’m absolutely on the right track and loving the changes.

Blog Post: My Top Tips for an Organized (and cute) Closet

If you follow my IG stories these built in’s will look familiar….and if not SUPRISE…these are my new built-ins in the front room.

….I also managed to squeeze in an office make-over for a client that included this cute locker/storage solution AND I’ve been consulting on a new-house construction project which has been a really exciting opportunity to get my hands in something from the ground up again!

There are two projects that I didn’t manage to even start this year — or last year. But I’m determined to finally wrap my head around each one and make a dent on both in 2025. They’re both daunting for different reasons which is why I keep putting them off but I’m going to do my best to not get distracted until I get at least one checked off.

So I completely dropped the ball on my monthly round ups (hence my little intro and thoughts for next year) which makes this little wrap up section a little underwhelming I know since I didn’t make it past June…but let’s send things off anyway with the organization and decor favs I HAD planned to share this year and say we did it all along?

One goal I am extremely proud of was more than doubling the amount of books I read this year from last. I used to be a pretty vociferous reader when I was younger but (as I think most parents can relate to) got out of the habit once I graduated college and hadn’t been able to find my groove again. This year I wanted to focus on reading more fiction from authors of a variety of backgrounds and I loved the experience. With a lot of upcoming trips planned I can’t wait to dive into my overflowing Wish List for 2025!